In many commercial settings, the distribution of goods from a manufacturer or supplier through distribution tiers and out to a store, kiosk or other point of sale is accomplished in accordance with a plan (e.g., a replenishment plan). A replenishment plan often specifies quantities of particular goods to be delivered to particular destinations at particular moments in time. Some replenishment plans are executed on a periodic basis and may include movement of goods or other forms of distribution to a point-of-sale (e.g., a checkout line or a barcode scanner). Often such distribution involves transportation through one or more transportation networks, and/or to or through consolidation and/or distribution centers and other storage of goods in warehousing facilities and/or on shelves (e.g., in a store or kiosk vendor situation). Often, point-of-sale vendors rely on their suppliers or distributors to replenish product stock in enough quantity (and in time) so as to have enough available (e.g., on the shelf) supply to satisfy any predictable demand. In other situations, the store places orders to the supplier. Even in this latter case, suppliers still need to know about the order demand so they can deploy enough inventory to fulfill store orders. Unfortunately, when the point-of-sale operator (e.g., store or kiosk or retail outlet operator) relies on the suppliers or distributors to place orders on behalf of the point-of-sale operator, this sets up conditions such that orders delivered to the point-of-sale can be far too large (or small) and/or are far too early (or late). Indeed, some naïve approaches to ensure sufficient point-of-sale stock have included purposely over-ordering to amass shelf stock or stockroom stock, “just in case”. However, although excess stock can mitigate the potential for lost sales during periods of higher demand, amassing the excess stock may be expensive (e.g., in the case of higher dollar value goods) or may be impractical (e.g., in the case of perishables). Moreover, merely ordering more (or fewer) quantities on behalf of point-of-sale operators and or placing orders earlier (or later) in time only serves to accelerate or delay the ordering errors. What is needed is a technique or techniques to combine point-of-sale consumption data, with distribution channel orders and inventory replenishment rules or models to generate a replenishment plan. The aforementioned legacy systems fail to reconcile retail-level consumption data (e.g., point-of-sale data) with wholesale or other distribution channel data (e.g., wholesaler's orders, inventory levels, etc.).
None of the aforementioned legacy approaches achieve the capabilities of the herein-disclosed techniques for using point-of-sale consumption data in combination with distribution channel orders and an inventory replenishment model to generate a replenishment plan. Therefore, there is a need for improvements.